babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.

OTTAWA - The federal government has decided to throw its weight behind a private member's bill that would make it a crime to wear a disguise while taking part in a riot.

The bill, tabled by Alberta Conservative MP Blake Richards, was endorsed by the government Sunday, according to a news release from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

Richards' bill would amend two sections of the Criminal Code that cover the penalties for taking part in a riot or unlawful assembly, criminalizing the use of masks. As the law stands now, Sections 65 and 66 state that participating in a riot could lead to two years behind bars.

If the bill - titled the Preventing Persons from Concealing Their Identity during Riots and Unlawful Assemblies Act - passes, wearing a disguise while participating in a riot would increase that jail term to five years.

The proposed legislation is an attempt to cut down on violence in the streets.

According to the code, an unlawful assembly is defined as a gathering of three or more people with a common purpose out to cause a disturbance, or incite others to do so.

The government's support comes in the wake of a massive "strike" by Quebec students protesting tuition increases - demonstrations that have frequently descended into violence.

"How do I know who was involved in this mess or do I simply have to refuse to hire anyone that is/was a student in Quebec this year?"

Fair question. Tell him the safest course is to refuse to hire any current Québec students. No matter where they stand on the tuition issue, they all hate shitheads and are prone to sabotaging their operations.

Also, you could tell him that refusing to hire someone based on their political beliefs and activities is a violation of human rights codes in many provinces, so he doesn't have to worry about it

MONTREAL — A key student leader suggested Sunday that a tentative deal reached Saturday to resolve the often-violent confrontation over tuition-fee hikes might not make the grade when students across the province cast their votes on it this week.

Martine Desjardins, president of the Federation Etudiante Universitaire du Quebec, said Quebec Education Minister Line Beauchamp is not helping matters by gloating about how the government didn’t relinquish its planned tuition hike.

“She’s not helping,” said Desjardins, adding she doubted this is “going through right now.”

However, Desjardins said she will explain to students that this is a last-ditch effort to save the semester.

“This is about the best we can do,” Desjardins said.

“The response has not been very positive.

“But this is the only thing students will get from this government.”

The three main leaders of Quebec’s 12-week tuition strike explained Saturday night that the tentative agreement they reached with the government calls for creation of a “provisional council” that would review spending by universities, turning over the savings the council finds to reduce extra fees that students pay on top of their tuition fees.

In the first year the offer calls for reducing extra fees by $127, while the two sides work on transforming the provisional council into a permanent council, with an ongoing mandate to review university spending and to return 100 per cent of the savings back to students.

Extra fees in Quebec universities average $537 a year, and the students estimate they will rise to $900 as the $1,778 tuition hike, which they would agree to as part of the settlement, is implemented.

Event Sunday, May 6 at 8:30 p.m. at Berri Square (Parc Émilie-Gamelin) against the government's offer of shit that makes no concession on rising tuition itself.

Because our claim is freezing from the perspective of free education. Because we are on strike for 12 weeks. Because it is not a committee of experts in cutting the services of our universities that will solve the current problem. Because we have an unprecedented power struggle. Because we will not give the government attacks, as well as physical media by the use of police to quell the student resistance. Because education is not a commodity. Because the money is and we do not have to cut services to students to fund the increase.

We reject the offer. The strike continues. The answer is clear: GEL or STRIKE.

..their having tech but from what i'm picking up, the students know what they want which is real change. one student spoke of a time when they do go back but that not being the end of the uprising but getting involved building coalitions with the broader population.

..so the demo ends peacefully with the promise that the will be back. 1000s were the numbers being reported. cutv is great. i have a 19" screen and moving in and out, mostly along, with the demo was exciting. almost like being there.

..i started posting re spain and greece etc more than a year ago and this is the same. unique in it's formation and history but the same in their demand for a new world. this is the benchmark for which all opposition to austerity, to how we are governed will now be judged in canada. this is also the students taking a leadership role on a global scale joining the global movements in their relentless demand for change..for direct democracy. or so i believe.

Thursday night, May 3, 2012, Philippe Lapointe receives a call from the FEUQ to ask if the CLASS received a call from the Department regarding a possible meeting with the government. We finally got a call from Pierre Pilote inviting us to a meeting Friday. Pierre Pilote even asked us if we would negotiate without FEUQ since preferred to the meeting Monday rather than Friday. We said no to this request since our mandate dictated to us not to negotiate without other national organizations. It's the next morning we were invited to a new table, and unconditional public. So we sent an email to student unions members announcing the holding of a second round of negotiations. At this meeting several persons were invited, the CSN, FTQ, CSQ, CRÉPUQ, the federation of colleges, Michelle Courchesne, Line Beauchamp, Alain Paquet and Pierre Pilote.

Friday noon we go to Quebec so instead of going to Victoriaville. Around 4:00 p.m. we will join the union representatives at the Hilton to see our game plan for the day or days to come. This time in the negotiations there is only one person per delegation, except for CRÉPUQ which two people and the government which has three. We decided that it is Philippe Lapointe was going to go to the table since it knows better stewards and it followed up with the last negotiation meeting.....

(Quebec) Students from High School Joseph-François-Perrault of downtown Quebec want to join the protest movement against rising university tuition fees. They will meet in general assembly Monday afternoon, the displeasure of management who saw fit to intervene with all youth and their parents to avoid 'initiatives organized by students could alter our end of school year. "....

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on a university campus has noticed the ballooning levels of administrative overhead: there is ceaseless and endless money for new administrators administrating stuff that you-say someone who studied at the school for six years and has taught there for the same length of time-have never heard of and have certainly never encountered other than through mysterious emails out of the ether letting you know that a new administrator has been hired or that an old administrator has been promoted to another university. Indeed, despite the proliferation of administrators, it seems that these administrators only administer one another..

Extremely disturbing. The CLASSE negotiating committee apparently says they were tricked - the final document didn't reflect important changes which they swear everyone at the table had agreed to. One member of the group signed, and has now apparently taken "full responsibility" for not noticing. They say he was targeted by the government side, taken out personally for discussions (and pressure) by the government negotiator, etc.

I have seen this happen so many times with inexperienced negotiators, who believe what they're told but don't carefully read the piece of paper in front of them, ask lots of questions, "troubleshoot" the language, etc.

But we're talking about a small group of student leaders, under unimaginable pressure for weeks on end. According to the report, the committee doesn't blame the individual who signed (Philippe Lapointe), but rather the government.

ETA: Oh, another bizarre side note: Apparently the idea of finding savings, then using that to reduce the non-tuition obligatory fees, came from Gilles Duceppe (!) who passed it along to Michel Arsenault (!), president of the Québec Federation of Labour, who was one of the union leaders present in the last day of talks.

ETA squared: Sorry, I meant to add - Gilles Duceppe got the idea from his son Alexis (!).

the savings that are to be deducted from the mandatory institutional (or ancillary) fees are limited by the ceiling of what those ancillary fees are. So there is no possible universe, even accounting for an eventual increase over the years in ancillary fees that would comply with government regulations, in which the entirety of the tuition fees hike can be compensated by an equivalent decrease in ancillary fees.

Partly correct (I'll explain later in this post). And it seems that the "disconnect" here is what some of the student leaders thought they heard at the table vs. what the document said. Here is Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois pretty well saying that explicitly:

But setting aside the structure of the conseil, the lopsided representation, the fact that its findings are only "recommendations", etc., there is a possible interpretation of the language of the agreement which would conform with the understanding of Martine Desjardins and indeed of the CLASSE reps (though maybe not Bureau-Blouin... I have long had trouble understanding him clearly...):

It's simple mathematics. Say the FIO at my campus are $800 per year, and the identified recurrent annual savings are $900. And say the recommendations are all approved. Then the $900 are used to reduce the $800, as follows:

$800 - $900 = -$100.

Thus, instead of owing $800 in non-tuition fees each year (as at present), the student would owe -$100 - which would require a $100 per year rebate to students, all else being equal. The tuition fee hikes remain in place, but every student gets a cheque from a separate account.

If the students can credibly demonstrate that the "verbal" understanding in discussion was that the extent of savings would not be limited by the level of the FIO, then the above "rebate" system is perfectly consonant with the language of the agreement.

Bärlüer - or anyone - what do you think? And if so, the students should publicly make this case right now and challenge the government (and the other intervenors - especially the trade unions) to confirm this understanding.

"Grad students in the "Arts, création et technologies" program at the University of Montreal have voted against the offer. 83% in favour of continuing the strike, 86% turn out. More reports from today's general assemblies coming in."

ETA: Martine Desjardins wins the prize for understatement of the year (not that I'm not pointing fingers at the government if the student negotiators' account of what transpired during the talks is accurate):

Cégep de St-Hyacinthe is especially significant, as it's a FECQ member (almost all the other ones listed above are CLASSE members; Gaspésie, who agreed to the offer, is, unsurprisingly, a FECQ member). The FECQ has been the group that has pushed the proposition the most—Léo Bureau-Blouin went so far as saying, in today's general meeting in St-Hyacinthe, "I think it's the best we can get".

ETA: oops... apparently, reports of St-Hyacinthe rejecting the proposition were premature. FECQ has published an "erratum" on Twitter...

Bärlüer - or anyone - what do you think? And if so, the students should publicly make this case right now and challenge the government (and the other intervenors - especially the trade unions) to confirm this understanding.

Gérald Tremblay's currently giving a press conference on how he plans to crack down on protests. He wants city council to adopt a bylaw declaring any protest that won't give its itinerary to the police in advance illegal by default, as well as duplicating the coming federal crackdown on masks.

Bouchard told The Daily that the document was obtained from Philippe Lapointe, the student negotiator for CLASSE. The author of the document is unknown, but Bouchard said that it was emailed to members of CLASSE last night.

“The final text was not exactly what we had discussed,” the document reads. “Several points were changed, and it appears that the Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ) worked harder than the students during the final moments of negotiations.”

According to the document, government negotiators approached student representatives individually during breaks. At one point, Lapointe was allegedly brought back to the negotiating table alone to “speed up the process.”

Pierre Pilote acted as the government’s chief negotiator throughout the weekend’s negotiating process.

“By isolating the representative, the government could then easily bring him into a state of emotional fatigue,” the document reads. “During the final signing of the document…he was therefore much less aware and capable of critical thought.”...

MONTREAL - Fewer than 100 protesters - many wearing green squares on their T-shirts and jackets - marched through the east end of the city Monday night to call for an end to the lingering student strike against tuition hikes.

The counter-protest to the nightly rallies by the so-called "red" demonstrators drew far fewer people than organizers expected.